Euan McKenna has a chip on his shoulder about rugby, he's not alone but the lengths he goes to down the IRFU is bizarre,

basically, it's no fair that the Irish players aren't flogged like pit ponies... Also the IRFU are raging incompetents, except when it comes to sneakingly setting up their systems to do down the poor rugby club owning sugar daddies of England and France

Owen Callan summarises my thoughts so I don't have to...

Quote:

Ewan MacKenna

You've to be listening intently in a screaming crowd to catch the whisper at the back of the room. And, while not always what you want to hear in that moment, at times it's what you need to hear.

On Monday, Paul Goze, president of the LNR (the French national league), gave a radio interview and he was quick to cut to the chase. He noted how the Celtic countries had a clear advantage come the Six Nations, and pointed to how Ireland can manage their top players in a way that France and England cannot. The reflex can be to call it begrudgery or whining or whatever the latest cheap buzzword is to dismiss the valid opinions of others when you win, but his words had value.

Take last Saturday for the obvious and potentially troubling evidence around our central contracts.

While the best club players will almost always line-out in continental competition, it's domestically where you find the abyss. Across the starting XV put out by Eddie Jones at the weekend, they'd played a total of 9,875 Premiership minutes this season – that's nearly 165 hours, and works out at 658 minutes per man. As for Joe Schmidt's starters, they'd played just 5,087 Pro14 minutes – under 85 hours, and just 339 minutes per man. They'd started 126 games combined, we'd started just 64. Indeed if you put the 30 on a list, only two of the top 17 are Irish with Bundee Aki's 703 minutes for Connacht leaving him seventh and Jacob Stockdale's 550 minutes for Ulster placing him at 14th.

What it meant was a mismatch, brought about at least to a degree by structures and scheduling, and one that is more pronounced in an era where centres could pass for bygone second rows and wings for flankers of yesteryear. Compare positions. At full-back, Anthony Watson's 753 minutes against Rob Kearney's 347; at out-half, in a stat alluded to by Ian McGeechan, Owen Farrell's 643 minutes against Jonny Sexton's 280; in the front row Kyle Sinckler's 845 minutes against Cian Healy's 235; in fact at lock George Kruis' played more than five times as long as James Ryan at 814 minutes against 149. Ultimately it was fresh and well prepared against very much the opposite.

Don't underestimate what's huge.

As even Sexton alluded to, "When we finished the Lions tour we had roughly three weeks off, we had a six-week pre-season with a mini-break - three-week block, week off, three-week block - and then back into games. The English boys, I think, had three weeks holidays and were straight in playing pre-season games; not great physical preparation to turn around from a Lions tour."

There are those that'll say that's only part of the reason for the difference at Twickenham and they could be right. There are also those that will say tough, that structures are part of the game and they made their choice (in the Champions Cup those same structures are turned on our provinces and look at what they've done against such odds), and they are right. There's one problem though.

IT article on new conveyancing rules looks like it was written by a 12 year old.

Quote:

Statue (sic) of Frauds

Over the millenniums (sic) there have been countless dealings in land in various forms. In 1667 the Statue of Frauds required that a contract regarding land be evidenced in writing. Deeds, as the instruments documenting and effecting land transfers, became the basis of the proof of one’s ownership. A system of registration of deeds was established in the 18th century and in the 1960s a registry of land ownership was set up in Ireland.